Reviewer:
Dark Moon
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favoritefavorite -
May 12, 2011
Subject:
A strange mix of genres
Adventure, biography, western...and a musical, too? Settlers (instead of cowboys) and very stereotypical "ugh, paleface speak with forked tongue," war-whooping Amerindians, which you know you are going to get right from the start with the opening "tribal" music with tom-toms beating that was always used as a signature tune in Hollywood films whenever the Indians show up.
But the strangest part is the musical numbers, performed in the fort while an attack is anticipated, or in a wagon train just before they are ambushed by Indians. It's the first movie I've ever seen where they stage the music and then kill off the performers immediately after (their singing wasn't that bad, was it?).
I have no idea how much historical accuracy was present (if any), but it sure felt phony, especially with (dis)respect to the Indians. If this was a film that was trying to be all things to all people, it wound up being a strange mish-mash of nothing (or of not very much) to me.
Oh yeah, and the part of the film that I nearly choked over was Danial B(0^0)b's speech to Chief Black Fish about how we Europeans came here in a spirit of brotherly love: "The White Man did not come to this country to destroy, but to build. He did not come here to steal land, but to work it, so as to grow more food, and to trade with his red brothers, so that all might share. He did not come here as a warrior, but as a friend. He did not come here to kill, but to live in a new world." (ROTFLMAO) Oh, please, please make it stop...! ("Would you like one of these lovely blankets? The previous owners no longer need them, having died of SMALLPOX...") And in the immediately preceding trial by ordeal scene that Daniel faces, the bow he is supposed to reach looks suspiciously like one of those cheap fiberglass recurved jobbies I used to shoot when I was a kid in summer camp. We're getting into "it's so bad, it's good (ie. funny)" territory, here.
Reviewer:
flickfdude
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favoritefavoritefavoritefavorite -
March 13, 2008
Subject:
watch it
Boone his family and that history with the Indians the colonists, the Big Chief, the British and the guns a'blazin, in color.